November 22, 2013 marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, one of the most momentous and scrutinized moments in American history. Even half a century later, questions persist: Who really shot Kennedy? Was there a conspiracy to kill the president? Why are there still so many loose ends and secrets?

With the benefit of both distance and technology, we know far more about the events that fateful day in Dallas than Americans did at the time. But facts rarely get in the way of a good story, and the JFK assassination is a story tailor-made for a novelist.

“We analyzed everything we could find, from the facts, to the myths that keep getting repeated,” Meltzer says. “We so want to believe there's a conspiracy. Why? Because we don’t want to believe that our government could be jackknifed by a high school dropout.”

But sometimes the facts don’t line up with the myth. Here, Meltzer shares with Yahoo ten aspects of the JFK assassination most Americans may not know, whether because they’re little-known facts or because the myth is a better story.

To be honest, you could have Obama himself (or some other supposed high ranking official) stand in front of the worlds media and say - "oh yeah JFK was killed by a 2nd gunman and Oswald was the patsy", produce a load of evidence and people still wouldn't believe it.

The same with lots of other conspiracy theories as well - 9/11, 7/7, etc... pick your poison the result would be the same.

I am of the opinion that a lot of people who oppose conspiracy theories don't want them to be true. I say this because they class themselves as "normal", whatever the hell that means, and those people who are conspiracy theorists or "truthers" etc.. are weird, crazy crackpots and so if they are correct and the "normals" are wrong its a ego thing - they cant accept that people they have denigrated their whole life would be correct.

8. Oliver Stone’s "JFK" damaged history. “Oliver Stone is a great filmmaker,” Meltzer says. “But his film 'JFK' did a great disservice to history by mixing fact and fiction. For the 20 million people that saw it in theaters, and the millions who have seen it afterward, that became the official record of the assassination.” Meltzer notes that several characters in the movie were created for the purposes of storytelling and had no relation whatsoever to real events.

This is a good point, a lot of people think that movie is a documentary.

To be honest, you could have Obama himself (or some other supposed high ranking official) stand in front of the worlds media and say - "oh yeah JFK was killed by a 2nd gunman and Oswald was the patsy", produce a load of evidence and people still wouldn't believe it.

The same with lots of other conspiracy theories as well - 9/11, 7/7, etc... pick your poison the result would be the same.

I am of the opinion that a lot of people who oppose conspiracy theories don't want them to be true. I say this because they class themselves as "normal", whatever the hell that means, and those people who are conspiracy theorists or "truthers" etc.. are weird, crazy crackpots and so if they are correct and the "normals" are wrong its a ego thing - they cant accept that people they have denigrated their whole life would be correct.

Ugh.. don't remind me about those 9/11 conspiracies.. the precursor to the birther movement and other wingnut ######.. -_-